Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

[Prott]

Hello,
I have a question that's driving me a bit nuts recently.

Is the touch board on Surface Pro 4/5 somehow married to the motherboard? I have a few Surfaces that, after the touch board change, lost all touch functionality.

- I tried flashing the bios (simple ME clean from a known good bios, previous bios didn't have an intergrated hub enabled), reinstalling firmware, reinstalling windows and even new touch boards.
- In one instance, after I tried to troubleshoot by using a known good screen + touch pcb combo on a Surface that lost touch, the touch board became bricked itself. After installing it back into its original Surface it no longer works.
- In another instance the touch "worked" (pointer jumped randomly when I touched the screen) until the Surface decided to restart and update the touch bios. After that the touch wasn't working anymore.
- I triplechecked if the LCD ribbons are far enough and it seems they are ok. I also tried two different touch PCB -> motherboard ribbons. No luck.

Is there something I might be missing?

Thank you so much for any help.

[jiroy]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Check this :

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...4-eac111ad703f

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Thank you. The problem is that the touch screen doesn't respond in UEFI, so all those possible solutions are not applicable.

[jiroy]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Reading your first post , I knew your only chance was if you skipped the UEFI settings , but I went for it so you may know that the screens are the problem , at least for Microsoft .. Anyway , I'll keep digging to see what I can come up with ..

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Thank you jiroy! I noticed there's a flash chip on the touch board as well, though I can't find any mention of it being a problem during replacement (or anybody trying to read/write to it).

[jiroy]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

That's a very possible reason , similar to laptops batteries internal identification protection .

[sikocan]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Hi mate,

I've had this nightmare before. You'll need to change something in bios firmware, I can't remember but it relates to Intel ME. For example in my case, if I have a dead surface, and I get to fix it by flashing new bios, my touch will no longer work. I give the old dump and new bios to a friend who does some magic and then it works. If appreciate if someone can help me understand what they change. I tried using hex editors, it had to do something with Intel me. Bios contains touch screen info as well.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Hi mate,

I've had this nightmare before. You'll need to change something in bios firmware, I can't remember but it relates to Intel ME. For example in my case, if I have a dead surface, and I get to fix it by flashing new bios, my touch will no longer work. I give the old dump and new bios to a friend who does some magic and then it works. If appreciate if someone can help me understand what they change. I tried using hex editors, it had to do something with Intel me. Bios contains touch screen info as well.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=104153

Its best to check a working dump with FIT to find all the right settings,them apply them to the bios backup if anything needs changing. Firmware can be copied from a working dump using a hex editor as well.

[sikocan]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Thanks I'll keep it in mind

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=104153

Its best to check a working dump with FIT to find all the right settings,them apply them to the bios backup if anything needs changing. Firmware can be copied from a working dump using a hex editor as well.

Thank you so much! What confused me is that the touch just stopped working by itself even without me doing anything with the bios (just by testing the touch board in a different Surface). I guess part of the firmware is being flashed onto the touchboard during an update? And that way my bad bios got flashed onto the working touch board and "bricked" it?

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

I am sorry for a doublepost.

I am going through different Surface Pro 4 BIOS binary files from the forum and none of them so far has the ISH enabled and the IntelTrcHubBinary.bin size is 0 kb. Is there any way I can get the ISH image for a Surface Pro 4?

Thank you so much.

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

UPDATE:
I noticed that when I attempt to update the device driver for the surface touch firmware (by first removing the driver from the device manager and then letting the windows update reinstall it):
- The Surface restarts and tries to update the bios, but then immediately restarts again before it does anything. This happens twice in a row.
- After that the Windows tells me there was a problem with the installation of the firmware.

Not sure what could be the cause of this. It happens on multiple machines. One of those surfaces has code 10 on the touch firmware, but others don't.

Does anybody have any ideas please? Thank you

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

UPDATE 2:
I managed to get hold of a working motherboard / screen combo with touch. Results are that the working board only has touch with it's own touch board. Any other board is not working. Also, if I move the working screen with touchboard into other Surface it also doesn't work.

So it indeed seems as if the touch board and motherboard are married together.

Any idea what to do if I need to replace the touch board? Seems as if there has to be a way since lots of those boards are being sold online.

[ahmypc]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

The touch module is compatible with all pro 4-5-6-7 motherboards. I've made dozens of changes so far. There may be a problem with the motherboard.

[Prott]

Re: Surface Pro 4/5 - no touch after LCD change

Thank you. It seems to be a problem with finding the right bios for the specific motherboard.

I tried flashing a few and some of them either don't show up properly (touch bios version 0.0.0.0), show a problem with a firmware (code 14) or (in my latest attempt) show that the firmware is working properly, but won't allow Windows to install the additional HID drivers.